An electrolyzer is an apparatus for electrically dissociating water into hydrogen and oxygen. Electrolyzers are advantageous over other methods of dissociating water because they use low voltage electricity and produce no noise and very little pollution. In a solid oxide water electrolyzer, steam is admitted to one side of an oxygen ion conducting barrier that is sandwiched between two electrodes. Passing electricity between the electrodes causes the steam to dissociate into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is transported through the barrier as oxygen ions and is collected on the other side of the barrier. In order to prevent the subsequent recombination of the oxygen and the hydrogen by intermixing of the oxygen and the hydrogen that are on opposite sides of the barrier, which could result in fire or explosion, it is necessary to seal one side of the barrier from the other. However, because solid oxide electrolyzers utilize ceramic materials and operate at very high temperatures, it has been very difficult to design seals that would not leak. Seals can be formed using a high temperature adhesive such as ceramic frit. However, cracks in the seals can occur during temperature cycling due to differences in the coefficients of thermal expansion of the sealants and the materials they seal. It is especially difficult to design positive mechanical seals when the temperature of the electrolyzer is very high, and yet it is at these very high temperatures that the electrolyzer is most efficient in dissociating water into hydrogen and oxygen. It has been calculated, for example, that the electrical energy required to operate the electrolyzer at 1000.degree. C. is only 79% of that required at 100.degree. C. Thus, until this problem of seals in solid state electrolyzers is overcome, the electrolyzers will not be most efficiently utilized. Inefficient electrolyzers may even be so uneconomical for many applications that they will not be used at all.